In this paper, we analyse education export in Finland and Sweden - two Nordic countries with diverging national policy approaches to education export, but where private edu-business actors thrive and look abroad to offer a (Nordic) ”helping hand” to education systems both in the Global North and South. Drawing on a range of empirical sources in both Finland and Sweden, i.e. interviews, policy documents and edu-business websites, we analyse education export rationales and justifications from the perspectives of policymakers and commercial stakeholders engaging in international trade in the Global Education Industry (GEI). Education export, briefly, includes the international selling of a range of education goods and services, such as teacher training and teaching materials, education technology, as well as consultancies in various forms (Schatz, 2016). For education export to be possible, some form of commodification of education needs to take place to enable cross-national exchange. A central point of departure for this paper is that such processes are far from neutral and entail the creation of subjectivities and associated power relations in the GEI (Parreira do Amaral et al., 2019; Verger et al., 2016).

In a previous study focusing on education export, we examined how the Nordic model in education is represented in policy documents on education export and nation branding in Finland and Sweden (Rönnberg & Candido, 2023). Now, we aim to analyse and critically discuss justifications and positionings of commercialisation of ‘Nordic’ education in the GEI by analysing education export in Finland and Sweden from the perspective of its stakeholders. We are guided by the following overall research question: To which extent and in what ways do policy- and commercial actors in Finland and Sweden make use of national and/or Nordic models in education export?

In this paper, we acknowledge the changing and borderless nature of the growing GEI as an important external context in which the global and national/local intersect (Verger et al., 2016; Parreira Do Amaral et al., 2019; Steiner-Khamsi, 2018; Ball, 2012). Immersed in business logic, education as an industry is intrinsically connected to other sectors and broader strategies. As a result, we also draw from perspectives on nation branding and welfare export, including the role of commercial actors in education and focusing on the corporate in the political economy of education — that is, the “actors, processes, networks, styles, and power relations related to businesses or the for-profit sector” (Moeller, 2020, p. 233; c.f. Andersen, 2020; Marklund, 2017). In the analysis, we turn to Marjanen, Strang, and Hilson (2021) and their rhetorical perspective as “a useful way of exploring the connections and interplay between foreign and domestic visions of Nordicness” (Marjanen et al., 2021, p. 19) to inform our study of policymakers and commercial stakeholders engaging in the GEI in Finland and Sweden.  The literature defines the construction of the Nordic and the national as a reflexive process, “where self-images meet the eye of the Other in a mutually reinforcing way” (Andersson & Hilson, 2009, p. 222), whereas Nordic is complementary, rather than opposed, to the national. Nation branding (Fan, 2010), and also Nordic branding, is used as “something prescriptive or even aspirational” (Strang et al., 2021, p. 32), conferring status and reputation to both the exporter and the importer – thereby also contributing to hierarchical positionings and subjectification.

Our analysis relies on data from export stakeholder interviews conducted between 2021 and 2022 in Finland and Sweden from three main stakeholder groups: i) Government representatives (from Ministries and Agencies), ii) Experts and advocacy groups, such as interest group representatives (incl. business associations and PPPs), and iii) education export entrepreneurs and edu-business representatives (N=14 in Finland and N=13 in Sweden). The informants were mainly identified via snowball sampling and on their centrality in education export networks. The interviews were recorded and transcribed and included questions on, for instance, experiences from education export, central actors and networks, justifications and reasons for education export, enablers and hindrances, as well as the perceived image of Finland/Sweden in international interactions, etc. The analysis is supplemented by Finnish and Swedish policy documents and related materials (e.g., texts from government websites) and commercial brochures and online materials related to education export (e.g., edu-business websites). We employ qualitative content analysis (Schreier, 2012) in the first step when analysing the data to examine whether and how policy- and commercial actors in Finland and Sweden make use of national and/or Nordic models in education export. We thus begin to structure the data by identifying text passages on the motivation, demand, justification, positioning, and functions of education export. In the second step, we analyse the excerpts from step one with a focus on the function and use of rhetorical elements (Marjanen et al., 2021). This is done to further unpack when and how the Nordic and/or the national (Finnish and Swedish) is used to make a claim of exceptionalism and difference or as a marker of tension(s) and disruption(s).

The interviews evidenced how Finnish stakeholders make use of PISA to justify the high demand and to confer prestige and reputation to the education products and services they export. In Sweden, we observed a de-coupling between education export activities (non-politicized) and education companies operating for-profit at home (highly contested). In these stakeholder narratives, the rhetoric of the Nordic is strategically operationalised to suit different circumstances under the realm of national identity, fuelled by nation branding efforts that take place in both countries. Moreover, we found that Finnish and Swedish stakeholders’ justifications and positionings of the commercialisation of education is embedded in the idea of otherness. The other (importer) is portrayed as in need of certain knowledge and skills that are provided by the exporter. As expressed in a Finnish nation branding report - “the Finnish model is well-known, and it can also serve as a channel for many current developing countries (CBR, 2010, p. 193)”, the trade of education is particularly (but not only) targeting “developing countries”. This, we argue, constitute a specific form of neo-colonialism, aided and enabled via education export. We conclude that the commercialisation of Nordic education abroad unveils tensions in which neoliberal capitalism commodifies education as a tradable welfare service by means of offering a ”helping hand” to education systems in need of education improvement and services. In such scenario, the Nordic (and the Nordic countries) would be the saviour(s) by exporting education as if they would be exporting the “truth”. This leads us to John Meyer’s (1977) definition of education as a “secular religion” in modern societies, where education is salvation and attached to hopes for miracles, which nowadays may come in the form of exported commercial packages, branded by Nordic edu-business actors.

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